CHAPTER II. 
PLANTING VINES. PREPARATION OF THE BORDER. 
It is very necessary to make a good preparation before 
planting vines in the first instance; but the way it 
is to be done is a matter on which great diversity of 
opinion exists. I have known many vines ruined by 
packing strong stimulants upon their roots. It is 
quite a mistake to plant young vines, in the first in- 
stance, in undecomposed animal matter. It is another 
mistake, too, merely to make a vine border of only 
about six or eight feet in width and then to confine the 
roots to that limited space, composed, it may be, of very 
fatty matter, burying it five or six feet deep. Let any 
man examine the roots of vines so treated and he will 
find that they are mere fibreless channels except at 
the extremities, which possess a few spongioles of a 
healthy nature simply because they have saved them- 
selves from the surcharge of the acid compounds and 
were buried so deep that some purifying influences 
could reach them and render them sufficiently nutritious 
for the real benefit of the vines. On examination of 
the roots of vines of five or more years so situated, it 
will be seen that the young fibrous roots—the life of the 
whole plant, and on which are found the spongioles or 
feeders—have made their way to those parts of the bed 
where less of the superabounding fatty matter is to 
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